A Question of Proof (18 page)

‘On the contrary, Mr. Gadsby. I have given the matter serious thought, and decided that it would not be in the interests of the school to forgo the fixture. Mrs. Vale entirely agrees with me, and since we were the nearest relatives of the unfortunate lad – in short, the match will take place on Tuesday, as originally arranged.’

Sims rubbed his hands. ‘Good! Excellent! I’m sure you’re right, headmaster. It is such a popular event, both with the boys and their parents. It would be a thousand pities to miss it.’

Mr. Vale inclined his head in gracious acceptance of his subordinate’s approval, took another sip of water, and gave a short, dry cough.

‘If you will be so good, Mr. Tiverton, as to supervise Strang’s men when they come to put up the marquee tomorrow. I have already informed the firm.’ Vale was one of those men who must always be standing over their work-people, either in person or by proxy. He proceeded on his stately way: ‘I have sent out invitations, and Major Fairweather has consented to select and lead the fathers’ team.’

‘What’s the idea of the marquee?’ came an audible whisper from Wrench.

‘Tea,’ said Michael.

Mr. Vale fastened a frosty eye upon the interrupter.
‘Our
own eleven is doubtless decided upon, Mr. Griffin?’

‘Yes,’ replied the gamesmaster, adding in a low, rumbling aside to Michael, ‘and if that old fool Fairweather potters about at the wicket for more than five minutes, I shall tell Stevens to adopt bodyline tactics.’

X

Annihilation of a Schoolmaster

THE NEXT MORNING,
Monday, at exactly seven-eighteen o’clock, Nigel Strangeways came wide awake, with the word ‘haystack’ on his tongue. He sat up in bed, under a mountain of blankets and eiderdowns, and reviewed the problem. Yes, his instinct had been right: the haystack was the nub and centre of the mystery. As Armstrong had said, it was too much of a coincidence altogether; either Michael and Hero had committed the murder, or the murder had been committed there to incriminate them; therefore, by elimination – He was pretty sure, too, of the murderer’s motive in seeking to incriminate them, and thence, by psychological elimination, of the murderer. But that seemed to be a dead stop. The motive he suspected would not impress the superintendent, and any able barrister could laugh it out of court in half a minute. Yet something must be done; one simply couldn’t have a murderer about the place; one had no particular liking for the legalised revenges of justice, it was simply that one preferred not to have a murderer walking around – so many temptations for the poor fellow. He might, of course,
having
erupted to his own satisfaction, become extinct; but volcanoes, fondly imagined to be extinct, have a nasty way of bursting out again, just when the local inhabitants have begun to feel thoroughly secure. No, proof one must have – visible, tangible, matter-of-fact proof; and that was the kind of proof which he despaired ever of getting. The haystack. Had he, so to speak, sucked it dry? If one can suck a straw, one could presumably, given time, suck a haystack. Leaving that academic point aside, however, had the haystack any more secrets to yield? All very well to say it was used to incriminate Hero and Michael. But surely a murderer of such unpleasant ability could have found safer means of incriminating them. After all, it was he who had to do the murder. Why choose such a public place? And when,
when
had he done it? There must be some logical connection between time and place. Nigel lit a cigarette and went over Michael’s account of the Sports Day, detail by detail. Suddenly he threw his head up, extinguished his cigarette disastrously upon the topmost eiderdown and exclaimed, ‘Good God! Yes. Yes. It must be. Well, I’ll be damned!’

After breakfast Nigel set himself to clearing the ground. There were a number of loose ends still lying about, and he felt that no advance could be made till they were out of the way. He went first to Mrs. Vale.

‘Things are beginning to move,’ he said, in answer to her unspoken question. ‘I just want three things –
a
request and two questions. The request is this: will you tell anyone who happens to ask you that Michael is under strong police suspicion.’

‘But surely he isn’t still, is he?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. So are you. But it shouldn’t last much longer. Were any of the staff intimate with Urquhart?’

‘They all knew him – Tiverton best, I think. But he made a habit of inviting each master to dinner at least once a year.’

‘What about Wrench?’

‘He had dinner with James last month. James used to invite new masters their first term.’

‘Third, can you tell me what your husband was doing all the time he said he was changing?’

Hero gave him a quizzical look, and seemed to be debating in her mind. ‘Is it absolutely necessary for you to know? Percy’ll probably divorce me if I tell you.’

‘I do want to know very much. As long as he wasn’t committing murder or anything, I’ll see it’s not made public.’

‘Very well, then, he was changing.’

‘What? What? ’ stuttered Nigel, quite flabbergasted.

‘Changing. Trying on different suits and things, and studying the effect in the glass. The parents were coming, you see. He doesn’t know I know it, of course, but, well, I suppose every one has to have a vice, and vanity is Percy’s.’

Nigel thanked her and walked away, meditating the curiosities of human nature, particularly as exhibited by the Rev. Percival Vale. He routed out Stevens II and gave him certain instructions. His next port of call was Griffin. He asked him to come out in the field, and there they reconstructed Griffin’s movements between one-forty-five and two-thirty on the day of the crime. They were in the middle of this when the gamesmaster suddenly bellowed out, ‘Hi, what the dickens are you doing over there, Stevens? Don’t you know you’re not allowed out now?’ He was beginning to make tracks towards the offender, when Nigel laid a restraining hand upon him.

‘It’s all right. I told him to. I wanted to see if the murderer could have got to the haystack without attracting your attention. If Stevens couldn’t do it, I bet the murderer couldn’t.’

As they re-entered the buildings a small and dirty hand tugged at Nigel’s sleeve. It was Ponsonby. The boy drew him aside and muttered darkly:

‘Promise you won’t tell anyone, not even the dictator.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he knows who the murderer is – at least, he said he did, but he won’t tell even me. S’pose he thinks he can track him down by himself.’ The mutinous lieutenant took himself off, not without several sinister glances over his shoulder at Nigel.

There was probably nothing in it, Nigel reflected;
one
couldn’t hope for all that luck, but stones, however small, cannot be left unturned by the detective, so he went after Stevens again. A certain amount of tact had to be employed in order not to betray Ponsonby, but the information was obtained without much difficulty. Stevens II had not wanted to sneak on what the superintendent had called a ‘playmate,’ even to his friend, the great detective. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I’ve got my suspicions about that oaf, Smithers. You see, at breakfast that day, apparently Wemyss had been ragging him. Every one does, of course. Anyway, I heard Smithers say to him in recess, “I’ll kill you.” He looked jolly bloodthirsty too, sir. And he’s been awfully funny lately – since the murder, I mean. I suppose I ought to have told you before, but it didn’t seem fair, somehow, though Smithers is such an oick.’

Nigel reassured him and made a mental note to interview the underbred Smithers in recess. The bell for first period now rang. Nigel strolled into the common room, where Tiverton was sitting with a pile of exercise books before him. He had this hour off. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting,’ said Nigel.

‘Not a bit. I can do this any time. I say, is it true that the police suspect Evans still?’

‘I’m afraid so. In fact, he’s in a very awkward position. That pencil, you know –’ Nigel added.

‘But I thought that was disposed of. He told us he’d lost it during the hay battle.’

‘Yes. But the superintendent seems to have got
an
idea that he had it the next day – the day of the murder.’

‘Well, I must admit I thought myself I’d seen him using it that morning. I say, good Lord, I hope I haven’t been making things difficult for him. No, it couldn’t be. There were only Griffin and Evans himself in the room then.’

Nigel gave him an inquiring look.

‘When I happened to mention that I thought I’d seen him using the pencil on the day after the hay battle,’ explained Tiverton.

There was a little desultory conversation, then Nigel strolled out and made for the telephone in the private side of the house. He rang up the Staverton police station.

‘Is that Superintendent Armstrong… Oh, right, I’ll hold the line… Morning, Armstrong – this is Strangeways. Sorry to bother you. Would you mind telling me again about Evans’ pencil that you found in the hay stack? His fingerprints only? Mm. On the ground, you said, didn’t you? Said he must have dropped it during the hay battle? Well, why not? … Yes, exactly, no proof to the contrary? … Very awkward for you, as you say. I take it no one but the police and his friends know about it? … By the way, are you coming up today? … This afternoon? Good. Yes, I may have something for you. Oh, I forgot to tell you – I know who the murderer is. Au revoir, then.’

Nigel rang off, leaving the superintendent dancing with rage and baffled curiosity at the other end of
the
telephone. Sims’ classroom, as Nigel entered it, presented an unusually orderly aspect; it may be that the repercussions of the headmaster’s last visit had not yet died away, or perhaps Nigel’s tacit disapproval of their treatment of the little man had percolated through Stevens II and Ponsonby to the rest. These two young gentlemen were sitting, for them, quite still, and when the form rose to their feet at Nigel’s entry, they returned their fellow conspirator’s glance with an expression so excessively wooden as to have aroused the deepest suspicions in any unbiased observer. Nigel advanced to the master’s desk, peered vaguely at the books lying upon it. Sims made a fidgeting gesture towards the books. Nigel asked if he could have a word with Sims outside. The door was, fortunately, fairly thick, so neither of them heard a hissing stage-whisper from Ponsonby, ‘I say, he’s going to arrest old Simmie,’ and another from Stevens II, ‘Go down the next street! He hadn’t got any handcuffs – they’d bulge in his pocket.’

‘Terribly sorry to interrupt you like this, but it’s rather urgent. The police, perhaps you’ve heard, have got some ridiculous idea that Evans is mixed up with this murder. We’ve got to clear him soon or they may take action. That pencil of his is the difficulty, of course.’

Sims looked puzzled. ‘Pencil?’

‘Oh, yes; didn’t you know? They found his silver pencil in the hay stack. Actually he dropped it there ragging about on the day before, but he can’t prove
that
, you see. I suppose you didn’t notice whether he had it on the morning of the murder, did you?’

‘No. I couldn’t be sure – that is. I didn’t see him using it, as far as I remember. But I’m afraid that’s not much use.’

‘Well, it can’t be helped. Thanks.’

Nigel wandered off again and read the papers in the common room. The Sudeley Hall murder occupied no space in them now; for two or three days their editors had announced that the police were making progress and shown the conventional optimism about an imminent arrest; the adjourned inquest had been reported, and there had been accounts in one or two papers of the boy’s funeral, pulsating with that ghoulish sentimentality for which editors have coined the phrase ‘human interest’. Even the echoes of the belabouring of that very dead donkey – police inefficiency – had died away. And what, after all, reflected Nigel, could Armstrong do? Police investigation lives by facts alone, and quite right too; facts are sometimes misleading, but at least they are safer than amateur psychological theorising or confessions induced by rubber truncheons and dentists’ drills. The superintendent had interviewed everyone who could possibly be concerned, and he was clever enough to deal with any ordinary murder. But this was no ordinary murder; which accounted, amongst other things, for the dearth of facts, of material clues.

When the bell rang for recess, Nigel went out into
the
yard and inquired for Smithers. He was pointed out a yelling ring of boys. They were engaged in a local form of bear-baiting known as ‘chub-chub’; this consisted of darting in at the victim, giving his cheek a violent tug, and melting again into the crowd of the oppressors. The victim, needless to say, was Smithers. He was red in the face and his eyes were strained with pain and humiliation; he backed slowly away from his tormentors, swinging wildly at them with the flat of his hands – he had once hit someone with a fist, and had not been allowed to forget such a violation of the code of sportsmanship. As he backed, malicious feet swung at him from behind and pushed him into the middle of the ring again. Nigel approached the group. He was glad to see that Stevens II and Ponsonby were not among them. He felt furiously angry. The boys stopped and stood sheepishly when they saw him. He whipped them soundly with his tongue for a minute – Nigel could be devastating when he wished. He made more impression than he realised at the time, for he knew the insensitiveness to rebuke of boys in the mass. Several masters had from time to time given tongue publicly on the subject of the bullying of Smithers, but it had had little effect; the boys knew that one must expect that sort of thing from masters, it was what they were paid for. But this intervention of a disinterested party, so to speak, and the heroic detective at that, was a different matter. It gave them a shock; and life was much easier for Smithers from that moment.

If Nigel had made an impression on these tough eggs, Smithers’ tormentors, the effect of his action on Smithers himself was enormous. The boy was a little dazed at first by the sudden relief; a little suspicious, too, as a trapped animal is suspicious of its rescuer. But soon enough, to continue the metaphor, he was ready to eat out of his hand. He found himself walking towards the field at the side of this kind and godlike man, a man who was talking to him as no one seemed to have talked to him for years. Nigel was wiser than to make any reference to the scene which had just taken place or to the dead Wemyss. This boy was no murderer, and anything he had to say could well wait for a few hours, till he had calmed down a bit inside. So he was content to draw the boy out about his home and his interests; it was easy enough, because Smithers turned out to be an authority on the beasts and birds of the countryside, and Nigel never had need to pretend interest in any subject of which he was ignorant. They had been talking for nearly a quarter of an hour when there was a pause and the boy gave him a look which he could not quite fathom; he imagined, however, that Smithers was going to try to express his gratitude, so he said quickly: